George Skelton: Newsom's budget math doesn't add up
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom has sent the Legislature a proposed state budget that is unrealistic and spews red ink.
That's essentially the straight-shooting opinion of the most trusted numbers-crunching outfit in Sacramento: the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office.
By law, the annual budget must be balanced. But "balanced" is a subjective characterization based on guesswork. Often it's rooted in wishful thinking and fudged calculations.
The revised $307-billion budget proposal that Newsom — known colloquially as the May Revision — is either too fat with spending or too thin on taxes, Legislative Analyst Gabriel Petek asserted.
